“Leadership and self-deception: Getting out of the box”

This book is a wake-up call to all those who think they’re good with people. “Leadership and Self-deception” is a valuable book that explains how we deceive ourselves, and how that deception eventually impacts our personal and professional relationships. Self-deception takes place when we blame everyone else for the problems that are going on. It is one of the key factors that determine outcomes in business and personal life. The book calls self-deception as being “in a Box”, a situation wherein we focus only on ourselves. We may be both, “in a box” and “out of the box” at the same time, depending on the people we interact with.

Most of us value honesty and think we are being honest in our relationships. This book effectively shows how we get “in the box” in our personal and professional relationships. What does this mean? It means that when we are “in the box”; we assume that our actions and reactions to the other person are both honest and justified. However, we are unconsciously distorting the other person’s motivations and actions in order to defend our “in the box” viewpoint. This radical concept made me uncomfortable and forced me to question some of my self-righteous moments.